Posts Tagged ‘doodling’

Yesterday I turned off the internet in my house. Yep, even after a friend said “never, ever turn off the Internet!” But the thing is you really can’t turn it off because it’s pretty much available everywhere, either Wi-Fi when you go places or using data or a hotspot with a smartphone. And today I am using my phone to make this blog post. I’m just using the mobile site through my browser, not an app, and so far it’s working alright. Although when I uploaded photos from my phone I had a hard time seeing the photos I wanted to share, until I realize where the little clear button was and how to navigate. Once I pretty much finished writing I switched to WordPress’s newest editor.

So let me get on with what I wanted to share. Over the summer I really did not create any artwork. I took a few pictures. But as far as painting or drawing or any digital art it felt like a pretty dry summer, in more ways than just the heat. So two weeks ago I went back to work, as school had started again and I am an assistant for an English language learners classroom. At the same time something finally started to come out of my brain in a creative way. Since then I’ve been wondering if starting back at my day job kept my left brain busy enough so that my right brain could get busy without being pestered by the left brains’ rantings about why I haven’t done anything all Summer. Yep, this thought makes me sigh and laugh!

So how this happened was that my sketchbook had started coming apart and I realized, oh, I hadn’t painted the covers of this new sketchbook. This is my ninth small sketch book that I have painted. You can see the others on my Flickr page. So that’s what I’ve been working on and I just want to share with you how it turned out. I use Copic Multiliners to draw the designs, Pitt pens on the inside and Zig Clean Color Real Brush on the outside to add color, and then sprayed it with Krylon Kamar Varnish.

Inside cover

Outside cover

The biggest challenge in using my phone to create this post has probably been adding the media and getting a cursor in the right place so it adds it where I want it to be. In the end I think I learned how to do it and hopefully I can do it more often as it’s not impossible and it’s definitely another option to using a computer to create a blog post. One of the best things about making this post with my phone was that I was able to speak a lot of this text using voice texting and then edit. It’s always good to try new things.

I made these aprons for my son and two daughters at Christmas. The plan was to make a full apron but this is what I went with. I am a big procrastinator and I also had to wait until there was money to buy the apron (since I hadn’t pulled out the sewing machine early enough).
I had bought some ‘fabric’ pens but quickly found out that they bled too much and so I used them very fast and sparingly for the colors. I used my Pitt pens for the blacks and some grey shading, and they worked much better. Then I heat set them with an iron. This past week I received a new purchase of a set of 23 Pitt markers, so I’m looking forward to playing on fabric with them.

I posted these in hopes of inspiring others to try this out. Wal-Mart has some really nice full aprons right now for about $7, but aprons are also very easy to sew up and a good starter project if you want to learn to sew.

In the past year I have had so much fun discovering ways to make creative marks. Sometimes it’s really difficult to find either inspiration or something to get me started. The Batman and rose on the aprons came from a search for images, mainly because I was short on time and needed help. Everything else is either from notes or searches on doodles and Zentangles. Keeping a sketchbook definitely helps for finding ideas and inspiration when I need it.

Flickr is another place that has been a wealth of inspiration, and from there I’ve found blogs and new friends with even more inspiration. Find me on Flickr and have a look at my ‘favorites’ and see what I admire. I read last year how Flickr seems to have dropped the ball to where they could’ve taken it’s site, but I now have artistic contacts from all over the world and my own area. Just last night I was searching and found a local photography club on there that I can get involved with. Hope you find great things there too.

Everything seems so hard until we try it. For me lately it’s been understanding Twitter. Perhaps that’s why I like researching, and why I do so many different things, whether it’s in sports or the arts. Perhaps I don’t like to not understand something as well, so I seek to master that thing. Or maybe it’s just my incessant curiosity. Well, not sure how philosophical I can get on the craziness of my brain, but I just know that certain things are a struggle. We don’t understand them so we tend to avoid them. I made the Twitter account and then avoided it. But yesterday I finally learned a few things because I took the time to read and ask questions. So yesterday I ended up visiting my blog I had created here on WordPress and was still very lost. I don’t understand the buttons on the side, or how to add pictures, and would really like some tutoring but can’t afford anything. But then this morning as these words began to swim in my head I wondered, “what about YouTube?” That place where all of you amazing people have put tutorials on how to do just about anything? So I have found this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEWPnHY8D3E And for all of you who have wanted to start blogging on WordPress as well, you might want to go through the tutorial and not struggle along as I had been doing. But for now, this will have to be put on the back burner because I have a lot to do before my online photography class starts at 10 AM with Creative Live.
Now since January I have been in a Flickr group called The Sketchbook Challenge. January’s challenge was Highly Prized, February was Opposites, March was Spilling Over, and April’s challenge was Branching Out. So today, being the last day of that month, I woke up realizing that I still had not posted anything. And then it hit me. I’ve been spending months trying to figure out where my artistic focus should be, and part of the problem is that I have too many branches. This week I have been out in the garage taking pictures of things to sell and give away, trying to pare down, or whittle down you might say, my areas of interest. It is the hardest things to get rid of an artistic endeavor. I seriously tried to put my mosaic stuff on Craigslist but the pictures wouldn’t load. So I resolved to give it a go today. And since I am in day 2 of 3 of this online class with CL, I will set my laptop next to the table and work. But I have to just dig in and do it. This means not doing my original posting idea for this month’s challenge but putting on what actually was in my sketchbook. I still have the idea in my head pacing around like a diver waiting to jump off the board, and I can’t wait to get into the water with it.
So this month’s Challenge post (although mind you I can post up to 3 pics a day on the group page) is a takeoff from what I did last month of exploring Zentangles. Only this time I added color. One of the hardest parts of being an artist is squashing that fear voice that comes as you attempt to do something….”what if….what if I ruin it?” You just have to say “it’s just paper”, or canvas, or clay or whatever you are working with. I fight this practical voice everyday that says I shouldn’t waste things. And that I’m not good enough so if I do this I’m wasting paper. Like, “you’re wasting food and children are starving in Africa.” That voice from my childhood that made me afraid to waste anything. I don’t remember hearing the voice much that says “just have fun!” I like that voice and I think I will write it in big letters everywhere I create art. We are a very wasteful society. And hey, I compost and recycle which not many do. But there has come a place in my art where I must break through and silence all the voices and just create.
This has been my ‘big’ struggle for the past few months in trying to be self-supporting with my art. But I’m facing my fears and taking it one day at a time. And then this imaginary burden I’ve created in my mind, (add dramatic theater voice here) which becomes a huge pile of waste that keeps filling my studio, threatening to overtake my creative soul (ahhh!!!….sorry, yes I can see the whole animated movie in my mind) will just shrink and run away. So music, paper and pencil at hand, I determine to have some fun with my art. At some point I know it will all get little easier. And definitely fun!